Language in Conflict: The Politics Behind the Rhetoric
| DOI | 10.1111/2041-9066.12009 |
| Author | Lesley Jeffries |
| Published date | 01 April 2013 |
| Date | 01 April 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Feature |
outlets and with the same pressure on time
and space. Both media and politicians also
want to present stories in as dramatic a way
as possible. This understandable pressure to
keep stories short and dramatic, however,
frequently results in binary categorisations
of people or motivations that are not based
on concrete differences; instead their inter-
pretation draws on our understanding of
conventional ‘opposites’ such as good/bad
and nice/nasty.
For example, the excitement in the press
earlier this year over the invented opposite
skivers/strivers demonstrates a willingness to
agree, if not on the detail of the debate over
welfare reform, at least on the need to cat-
egorise people under one or other heading.
As columnist Zoe Williams (the Guardian, 9
January 2013) noted: ‘The skiver, in oppo-
sition parlance, is always unmentioned, yet
he lurks; Labour won’t tolerate him either,
Language in Conict:
The Politics Behind the Rhetoric
Much newsprint and airtime is
spent in discussion about the
language used by protagonists
in news stories. From the ‘sexed up’ Iraq
war dossier to the question of whether a
government minister called police officers
‘plebs’, the language itself is often the
story. And yet there is sometimes too
little recognition in much of the coverage
of these linguistic news stories that the
meaning of texts is far from transparent
and that linguistic insights can provide a
deeper understanding of many of the news
stories of our times.
Let us begin with the question of over-
simplification. Most people accept that news
media often have to simplify complex news
so that it can be presented quickly. Politi-
cians, too, need to be able to communicate
effectively at speed with potential voters
and constituents, often via the same media
Lesley Jeffries examines the importance of linguistic understanding in the world of politics and the conflicts
that arise when politics fails. From the advent of ‘choice’ to the constructed opposite of ‘strivers versus skivers’,
the language of politics can have very real world effects.
this feckless bogeyman of Westminster’s
devising.’
Opposites Attract
What Williams is responding to here is
the rhetorical effect of what linguists call
‘complementary opposites’ (there are other
types). Complementaries are mutually
exclusive pairs of words which you can-
not apply at the same time to a thing or
person. They are not the same as gradable
antonyms (hot-cold, big-small) which allow
for intermediate positions (warm, medium).
They also differ from converses, which are
mutually-dependent opposites like lend-
borrow and husband-wife, where you can’t
have one without the other. Thus, a person
cannot be both a skiver and a striver at the
same time, though presumably one could
turn from a skiver into a striver if govern-
ment initiatives had the right effect.
Speakers produce a lot of ‘invented’ op-
posites in daily life and much of the time
they are a shorthand way to get a message
across. But the danger is that when politi-
cians use them and the media pick them up
enthusiastically, we may not stop to think
about whether these labels reflect reality.
As Zoe Williams rightly notices, once you
have created a complementary opposite,
you are presupposing that both terms have
referents in the real world. Just as it makes
no sense, in religious terms, to conceive of
evil without its complementary opposite,
good, so the term striver in this political de-
bate is accompanied by its shadow, skiver,
even if both words are not actually present
in the text or discussion.
The importance of created opposites is
not just to be seen in relation to the in-
ternal politics of a country. There is ample
evidence that the lead-up to major conflicts
– and their playing out – is peppered with
opposition construction of this kind, which
As with the ‘sexed-up’ Iraq war dossier, the language itself is often the story
Press Association
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Political Insight
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